Local Government – Page 40

Um…About Those “Laboratories of Democracy”….

Federalism is one of the most important elements of America’s constitutional architecture (although my students’ lack of acquaintance with that term might suggest otherwise).

Federalism refers to the division of authority between federal, state and local levels of government; it rests on the premise (sometimes called subsidiarity) that problems are best addressed by the smallest unit of government able to deal with them. Americans have long had a strong bias toward “local control.”

In a phrase that has resonated, former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as “laboratories of democracy.” The idea is that states would initiate experiments with new programs, new ways of doing things, and if those new ideas were successful, other states would replicate those “pilot programs.”

It’s a nice theory, and it works in some contexts. But it assumes the ability of other states to learn from the successes and especially from the failures of others. And that hasn’t been happening.

I’ve written before about the very different policies being applied in Wisconsin and Minnesota–but more states are following Wisconsin, which is in a world of hurt, than are following Minnesota, which is thriving. Kansas and Louisiana are economic disasters, yet Republican governors (including, of course, Indiana’s Mike Pence) are blindly following the policies that led them down that road.

Speaking of Mike Pence, his photograph recently “graced” a blistering article detailing the growth of right-wing radicalism at the state level. The article asserts that while Americans are transfixed by a federal presidential campaign that sometimes seems to have been copied from a grade B movie, state-level lawmakers are busily rolling back hard-won advances in equality and freedom of choice.

While the nation’s eyes are riveted to the national stage, Republicans continue the multi-decade project of turning our nation into a right-wing wasteland by focusing their efforts where they can have the most impact with the least attention: state legislatures.

The article lists–among other travesties–bills in Indiana and Florida intended to cut off access to abortion and even birth control; Oklahoma’s efforts to strip any doctor who performs an abortion of his license to practice medicine, and an Iowa state senator’s proposal to make abortion a hate crime.

A whole raft of GOP-led states–including “moderate” John Kasich’s Ohio– is busily defunding Planned Parenthood.

But it isn’t just the war on women. Wisconsin (!) is proposing to fine so-called “sanctuary cities.” Iowa wants to authorize handgun possession and use for children under 14, while Arizona is moving a bill that would forbid state and local officials from enforcing federal firearms laws. Arizona is also loosening the already-weak regulation of “dark money” in politics.

Several states are prohibiting the use of “sharia law.” (It’s a safe bet that none of the wackos pushing this particular bit of nonsense have the faintest idea what sharia law is. They just don’t like Muslims.)

And of course, the frantic effort to push LGBT citizens back into the closet–and thus mollify the homophobes and theocrats who form such a prominent part of their base–is going full-steam ahead.

Thanks to gerrymandering, voting out these state-level legislative embarrassments ranges from difficult to virtually impossible. But you can’t gerrymandering a statewide office, and here in Indiana, getting rid of Mike Pence would be a very good place to start.

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Bagging Home Rule

The IBJ reports on a measure approved by the Indiana Senate that would prevent local government units from taxing or restricting the use of disposable plastic bags by retailers, including grocery stores.

Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, said businesses, industry groups and many consumers oppose regulation of bag use.

Many consumers are also citizens who believe the cities they live in should have the right to determine their own policies–on plastic bags, on public transportation, and on the myriad other issues pre-empted by state legislators who believe that they know better than local officials what rules Indiana residents should follow, and what programs and/or initiatives those residents should be allowed to implement.

Whatever your opinion about plastic bags or public transportation, the high-handedness of our statehouse overlords on those and other issues ought to infuriate you.

It is particularly offensive that decisions affecting residents of urban areas are routinely made by representatives of suburban and especially rural populations, whose grasp of the challenges and realities faced by elected officials in metropolitan areas is limited, at best, and whose hostility to the needs of Indianapolis and Central Indiana is a perennial statehouse reality.

This disinclination to allow Indianapolis to govern itself, to make decisions about its own affairs, is particularly galling because the city is the economic driver of the state.

Talk about your “makers” and “takers”!

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Stop the World–Mike Pence Wants Off

Religion News Service reports on an interesting recent survey in which people were asked about the purported conflict between religious liberty and civil rights for LGBT Americans.

The short version? Most Americans oppose religious exemptions to LGBT non-discrimination laws.

The details?

71 percent– including majorities in all 50 states and 30 major metropolitan areas — support laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public accommodations.
59 percent oppose allowing small-business owners in their state to refuse service to gay and lesbian people, if doing so conflicts with their religious beliefs.
53 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, compared with 37 percent (including most evangelical Protestants and Mormons) who oppose it.

Even among groups opposed to same-sex marriage, support for protection from discrimination crosses all “partisan, religious, geographic, and demographic lines,” according to Public Religion Research Institute CEO Robert P. Jones.

The survey results demonstrate something that many of us have suspected: opposition to civic equality for LGBT folks is not coming primarily from religious denominations or organizations. (Click through to see the breakdown.) Anti-gay bias is primarily a political position, not a religious one, and the difference between the political parties is stark: the survey found that 74 percent of Democrats but only 40 percent of Republicans support civil rights protections for LGBT citizens.

Of course, that’s little comfort for those of us who live in blue cities located in bright red states like Indiana.

In our gerrymandered state, it would take a lot of organization, a lot of energy, and a truly superior “get out the vote” effort even to reduce the legislative super-majority enjoyed by the GOP. But those of us who disapprove of the legislature’s failure to add four words and a comma to the state’s civil rights law—and those of us embarrassed by our Governor’s homophobic and theocratic impulses—do have the opportunity to send a very clear message to the political establishment by decisively defeating Governor Pence this November.

Unlike the majority of religious folks, Mike Pence hasn’t come to terms with social progress. It isn’t just LGBT Hoosiers; his views on education, the environment and women are wildly at odds with the views of most of our citizens. His disinterest in the nitty-gritty of governing, and the damage he’s done to the state’s business climate, make him eminently beatable.

Maybe we can’t stop the world to let him off—but we can retire him and get on with the business of making Indiana a state that welcomes everyone.

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Indiana Legislative Folly….Rinse and Repeat…

Remember House Bill 1082? The “No Stricter Than” measure that would prohibit Indiana’s environmental agency from acting to combat local environmental threats if the proposed action was “stricter” than EPA standards?

I am not the only observer pointing to the real dangers--not to mention absurdity– of that measure, which has been moving inexorably through the legislative process.

The utter hypocrisy of the GOP on the EPA and environmental regulation was on vivid display last week in a Congressional hearing called to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan:

In a House hearing last week, GOP lawmakers focused their outrage on the weakness of EPA regulations and actions that contributed to the Flint disaster. However, The New Republic has detailed their consistent opposition to its regulatory actions.

Republicans in Washington and Indianapolis constantly complain about EPA “overreach.” In one of the recent GOP debates, Jeb Bush called for sending EPA authority back to the states, and he is hardly alone. Indiana Governor Pence has been an ardent foe of virtually all environmental efforts, and has made the EPA a special target, despite the fact that Indiana’s air and water rank among the country’s most polluted.

For years, at the urging of well-heeled industry lobbyists and donors, Republicans have done everything they can to neuter the EPA and eviscerate its regulatory power— and now, when faced with an environmental crisis, Congressional Republicans have the gall–the chutzpah–to blame that crisis on “weak” EPA regulations.

At the very same time, back home in Indiana, Republican state legislators —still singing the lobbyists’ song—are insisting that EPA regulations are so strong that we shouldn’t allow state government to supplement them. Ever. No matter what.

You really can’t make this shit up.

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An Impressive Start

Indianapolis’ new Mayor, Joe Hogsett, has hit the ground running, as the old saying goes. He has recruited an impressive team of people who understand how a city works, many of whom bring deep backgrounds to their duties (Kathy Davis and Troy Riggs come immediately to mind, and they aren’t the only ones).

He has also reached out in a bipartisan fashion, both to Republican Councilors and to the departing Ballard Administration (of which Riggs was a part). But I was very pleased to see that courtesy to his predecessor has not trumped willingness to revisit some of that predecessor’s more unfortunate decisions. One of those–a contract with Covanta that locks the city in until 2028–is evidently getting a second look.

According to the IBJ,

Hogsett said the city will take the next 90 days to “reassess” plans for the facility, called an Advanced Recycling Center, which was planned for Covanta’s existing Indianapolis campus near its Harding Street trash incinerator. Hogsett said Covanta has offered assistance to the city in that process.

I’ve written before about the very real problems with the Ballard Administration’s “recycling” agreement with Covanta. I put recycling in quotes, because there is good reason to doubt that Covanta’s untested process would actually produce the promised results. The contract calls for use of a process known as “Dirty Recycling” that would allow residents to throw all their trash into one receptacle; actual separation is to occur at the Covanta facility.

This is a process that is simply not suitable for use in many industries that purchase recycled materials.

There are several other aspects of the contract that raise eyebrows, from the manner in which it was negotiated (without the legally-mandated bidding process), to its duration, to provisions that actually punish the city if recycling rates improve. (Covanta has used our trash to generate steam under an arrangement negotiated during the Hudnut Administration; recycling is most definitely not their real goal.)

The re-examination is welcome–and another indication of the competence of the new administration.

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